walletClient.signTransaction Fails with "unknown account"

[0xsergen]

Description

I'm building a dApp on Base Mainnet (chain ID 8453) using Wagmi and viem, and I'm encountering an issue with walletClient.signTransaction. My goal is to sign a transaction locally using the user's wallet and then send the signed transaction using publicClient.sendRawTransaction (which uses eth_sendRawTransaction) to route the transaction through an endpoint. However, walletClient.signTransaction consistently fails with an InvalidInputRpcError: Missing or invalid parameters. Details: unknown account error, even though the wallet supports eth_sendTransaction (as evidenced by walletClient.sendTransaction working fine).

I suspect the issue is related to the wallet connector (WalletConnect) not supporting eth_signTransaction, but I'm looking for guidance on how to resolve this while still meeting my requirement of using eth_sendRawTransaction via the publicClient.

Environment

• Wagmi
• viem
• ConnectKit
• Wallet Connector: WalletConnect

Code Snippets

Wagmi Configuration (wagmiConfig.ts)

import { base } from "wagmi/chains";
import { createConfig, http } from "wagmi";
import { QUICKNODE_ENDPOINT_URL, WALLETCONNECT_PROJECT_ID } from "./constants";
import { getDefaultConfig } from "connectkit";

export const config = createConfig(
  getDefaultConfig({
    chains: [base],
    transports: {
      [base.id]: http(QUICKNODE_ENDPOINT_URL),
    },
    walletConnectProjectId: WALLETCONNECT_PROJECT_ID,
    appName: "App",
  })
);

useSendTransaction Hook (useSendTransaction.ts)

// 1. Prepare transaction request
      const preparedRequest = await walletClient.prepareTransactionRequest({
        to: request.to,
        data: request.data as `0x${string}`,
        value: request.value,
        account: address,
        gasPrice: request.gasPrice,
      });

      console.log("preparedRequest", preparedRequest);

      let transactionHash: `0x${string}`;

      // 2. Try to sign the transaction with the wallet
      try {
         const signature = await walletClient.signTransaction(preparedRequest);


        console.log("signature", signature);

        // 3. Send the signed transaction using the public client (uses eth_sendRawTransaction)
        transactionHash = await publicClient.sendRawTransaction({
          serializedTransaction: signature,
        });

        console.log("Sent via publicClient (eth_sendRawTransaction)");
      } catch (signError) {
        console.warn(
          "Failed to sign transaction with signTransaction:",
          signError
        );
        console.warn(
          "Falling back to sendTransaction (may not use desired RPC endpoint)"
        );

        // Fallback: Use sendTransaction, which signs and sends in one step
        transactionHash = await walletClient.sendTransaction({
          ...preparedRequest,
          account: address,
        });

        console.log(
          "Sent via walletClient.sendTransaction (may use wallet's default RPC)"
        );
      }

Expected Behavior

• walletClient.signTransaction should sign the transaction locally using the user’s wallet (via eth_signTransaction).

Actual Behavior

• walletClient.signTransaction fails with the following error:

  InvalidInputRpcError: Missing or invalid parameters.
  Double check you have provided the correct parameters.
  Details: unknown account
  Version: [email protected]
  

• However, using walletClient.sendTransaction works fine, indicating that the wallet supports eth_sendTransaction.

Debugging Steps Taken

1. Verified Wallet Connection:

   • isConnected is true, and the address matches the expected account.
   • walletClient.requestAddresses() returns the correct account, confirming the wallet has access to it.

2. Tested with walletClient.sendTransaction:

   • Replacing signTransaction and sendRawTransaction with walletClient.sendTransaction works, but it doesn’t use my publicClient, I assume that the transaction is sent via the wallet’s default RPC endpoint.

3. Tried Explicitly Passing account:

   • Passed account: address to signTransaction, but the error persists.

Questions

1. Is there a way to make walletClient.signTransaction work?
2. Are there known issues with useWalletClient or signTransaction in [email protected] that might cause the "unknown account" error?

Additional Context

• I need to use eth_sendRawTransaction via my publicClient because I want to route the transaction through a dedicated endpoint.

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated! Let me know if you need more details or logs.